The potential benefits of preserving a baby's umbilical cord blood are well documented. A similar idea is to preserve a baby's umbilical cord tissue, in which a section of the umbilical cord, together with all the cells contained therein, may be preserved at birth for later use. The cord tissue may be frozen in a cryogenic storage tanks for long-term preservation. When the baby's cells are needed for therapies in the future, the cord tissue may be processed to extract the cells using the best technology available at that time.
For example, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0275127 A1, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a method for extracting viable progenitor cells from frozen umbilical cord tissues. In this disclosure, an umbilical cord tissue is a blood vessel bearing the perivascular Wharton's jelly, and the extracted progenitor cells are human umbilical cord perivascular cells (HUCPVCs). In the disclosed methods, intact cord vessels with associated Wharton's jelly are obtained by gently pulling the vessels from cord that has been opened longitudinally and sectioned transversely to yield vessel segments. This process sheds the bulk of Wharton's jelly within the cord, but leaves Wharton's jelly in the perivascular region associated with the extracted vessels. The ends of the vessels are tied off to prevent the escape of any blood remaining within the vessels. In the alternative, blood within the vessels can be removed by repeating rinsing.
U.S. Pat. Publication No. 8,703,411 B2, issued to inventors of the present invention, discloses a method of preserving an umbilical cord. The disclosure of the '411 patent is incorporated by reference in its entirety. The method disclosed in the '411 patent comprises obtaining a segment of an umbilical cord; mincing the segment of the umbilical cord into cord tissue pieces; admixing the cord tissue pieces with a cryogenic composition comprising a cryoprotectant and a protein to form a mixture; shaking the mixture for a duration of no shorter than 20 minutes and no longer than 40 minutes; and cryopreserving the mixture.
Umbilical cord tissue preservation and subsequent cell culturing are relatively new techniques. While the prior art provides useful methods for preserving useful umbilical cord tissues, there is still a need for efficient methods that can preserve umbilical cord tissues for later use.